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Taking a Step on Immigration Reform

Justice Scalia left no doubt where he stands on immigration. And Keith Miller at Mere Orthodoxy approves. While Scalia’s comments have been roundly denounced (see this from Richard Posner), Miller embraces them as a corrective to the the stance of Tom Minnery from Focus on the Family, which Miller sees as being especially soft on the issues of deportation and national sovereignty.

Nowhere in anything Focus or the “Table” wrote up was any recognition of Scalia’s principle of sovereign exclusion. Sure, there are allusions to the “rule of law” and “secure national borders,” but deportation is discounted as a non-starter due to the immigrant’s inherent human dignity. Without providing a philosophical defense of the exercise of the power to exclude, these Evangelicals are allowing national sovereignty to atrophy.

Far from being discounted, it is the scale and impact of present deportation policies that have repeatedly raised the issues for congregations, as Minnery’s article points out. Moreover as deportation is not humanely possible for the 10 to 11 million non-documented, deportation must necessarily be selective and so constantly prone to an erosion of the rule of law.

Further, it is the human cost to these deportations that in turn have been the basis for the statements of the Focus and of the evangelical round table above. The core issue, has always been working to have some sort of recognized status for workers, to bring them and their families from out of the shadows where injustices continue to fester.

As to national sovereignty being allowed to atrophy, what sort of national sovereignty is it that turns away young people who desire to serve the nation? Or discounts the desire of others to actually get on a path to citizenship?

In short, the Scalian / libertarian viewpoint so snarkily defended promises nothing by way of solution; it is a politics of denial, of Dives refusing to look outside his gate at Lazarus. This indifference is hard to square with Christian teaching.

And finally, if nothing else should catch one’s attention it is this: that the politically sectarian viewpoint evidenced by Mr Miller, a viewpoint so clearly affirmed by the GOP nominee Mitt Romney in the primary season, is a political non-starter. Particularly for those who would bring Christ’s lordship to the political sphere.